U.S. Pat. No. 4,123,246 (hereinafter, Patent Document 1) discloses a bending apparatus wherein a glass sheet, which has been heated to a temperature close to its softening point by a heating furnace so as to be bendable, is bent by being conveyed on a roller conveyor having a curved plane defined by plural rollers. By this apparatus, the softened glass sheet swags by its own weight, being bent so as to follow the curvature of the conveying plane defined by the roller conveyor. In this case, the glass sheet is bent in a direction perpendicular to the conveying direction.
JP-A-2000-72460 (hereinafter, Patent Document 2) discloses a bending apparatus wherein a glass sheet, which has been heated to a temperature close to its softening point by a heating furnace, is partly bent in a glass sheet conveying direction by vertically moving rollers of a roller conveyor in accordance with a conveying position of the glass sheet while being conveyed along the conveying plane defined by plural rollers of the roller conveyor. In this case, the glass sheet is bent along the conveying direction.
The bending apparatuses disclosed in the above-mentioned two Patent Documents 1 and 2 can bend a softened glass sheet so as to follow a curved conveying plane because of swaging along the curved conveying plane by its own weight.
On the other hand, JP-A-2000-44264 (hereinafter, Patent Document 3) and JP-A-2000-290030 (hereinafter, Patent Document 4) disclose air-cooling/tempering apparatuses for a glass sheet.
While these air-cooling/tempering apparatuses covey, on a roller conveyor, a glass sheet which has been taken out of a hearing furnace and has been heated to a high temperature, these apparatuses air-cool and temper the glass sheet by injecting air toward a portion of the glass sheet between adjacent rollers of the roller conveyor from box-like outlets disposed between the adjacent rollers.
Further, JP-A-2001-2434 (hereinafter, Patent Document 5) and JP-A-2001-2435 (hereinafter, Patent Document 6) disclose air-cooling/tempering apparatuses which inject air toward a portion of a glass sheet between adjacent rollers of a roller conveyor from box-like outlets disposed between the adjacent rollers while vertically moving the outlets in synchronization with vertical movement of respective rollers. These air-cooling/tempering apparatuses perform air-cooling/tempering operation while vertically moving respective rollers of the roller conveyor so as to keep the glass sheet in a bent shape formed by a bending apparatus before an air-cooling/tempering apparatus (see Patent Documents 1 and 2). These air-cooling/tempering apparatuses can uniformly temper the glass sheet at a whole since outlet modules vertically move so as to follow the rollers in order to make the distance between each of the outlet modules and the glass sheet constant.